1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and an apparatus for continuously feeding materials in a tire fabricating machine.
2. Description of the Prior Art
(1) In one known method for feeding materials in a tire fabricating machine in the prior art, material in a rolled shape is delivered for a tire fabricating machine as loaded on a truck and is left there. If the material is consumed during a tire producing operation, an operator stops the tire producing work, takes out the used unnecessary roll and disposes a new roll of material in a material feeder of the tire building machine. A liner wound jointly with the material is rewound and wrapped around a liner take-up roll in the material feeder. Then terminal treatments are carried out on the new and old materials, and the new and old materials are spliced to each other.
(2) Or else, in another known method, a truck provided with a co-wound roll of a material and a liner, a liner take-up roll and a necessary intermediate roll is delivered to a tire fabricating machine and is left there. If the material is consumed during a tire producing operation, an operator stops the tire producing operation and removes the used material truck. A new material truck is then delivered. A leading end of new material is derived from the co-wound material roll. Then terminal end treatments for the new and old materials are performed, and the new and old materials are spliced to each other.
(3) Although the above-mentioned known methods (1) and (2) constitute partly automated methods in that a material truck is delivered in an unmanned fashion and is left at a predetermined location, the work of aligning a used material truck and a new material truck and the exchange thereof are carried out by a worker in the tire fabricating machine while production is stopped.
As will be apparent from the above description of the known methods in the prior art, extremely inefficient measures have been employed heretofore for exchange of rolled materials. Consequently, a real operation time for production is relatively small, and the material feeding system exhibits poor productivity.